Being Black in Game Audio

[Music] all right everybody thank you so much for being here this panel is being black in-game audio so despite a public commitment to diversity and inclusivity black people are very underrepresented in our industry in our game industry and in this panel we're going to hear from black audio designers of various levels of experience and various disciplines about their experiences about their problems about the struggles and about their thoughts on how we can all create a more diverse and more inclusive and more empathetic industry so huge thank you to gdc for allowing this to happen because this message does need to get out there we do need to share these experiences more and more and huge thank you to each and every one of our panelists so before we get into this for all of our panels just when i ask a question feel free to answer wherever you feel comfortable answering because some of these questions you know will be heavy some will be lighter jump in wherever you feel is appropriate

for you i do have some questions specific to each of you feel free to jump in though wherever in just general questions so let's get into some introductions for all of you first up is john hamilton smith v aka slide20xx and john hamilton smith v or slide20xx is a composer who's worked on projects such as calico the steven universe anti-racism psas the stars between us and has even written some music for the hit vr game rec room next up we have wilbert roger ii composer for mortal kombat 11 star wars vader immortal guild wars 2 i knew the distant light call of duty world war ii destiny 2 forsaken and i'm sure so so many more credits that i am forgetting at at this moment next up is caleb epps who is the audio director at brass lion entertainment the studio focused on telling stories who are black brown or traditionally marginalized he was also the sound

design manager at facebook senior sound designer at sledgehammer and audio lead and sound designer at harmonix and last up but not least is jasmine cooper who is a multimedia composer running her company perennial sounds based out of vietnam which offers both bespoke and licensed music for media projects of all types and me my name is akash the car and i'll be moderating this panel so the first kind of topic that i want to dive in with all of you is networking while black so this industry is so focused on networking on making friends on working with people that you've met in some capacity before it's very very common in this field so i'm curious just as a broad starting point what should game audio folks be aware of when it comes to networking making friends finding those projects while black

so i feel like kind of something that i kind of want to start with is actually it's it's a it's kind of an anecdote so i remember i was in san francisco and i desperately needed to get a haircut which has repeated itself but i digress uh i was in san francisco and i went to this barber shop and it wasn't like if i'm if i'm telling the honest truth i think it was a barbershop that may have like specifically catered to members of the lgbt community but for whatever reason they were playing like uncensored hip-hop classics from the 90s that i grew up with so i was in this barber shop getting this haircut and i got to experience this sense of like feeling like i really belonged in this public place because it was catering to like my own personal interest and in general that is a thing that does not happen in the spaces that i'm participating in like in classical music spaces in video game music spaces in tech heavy spaces right like i've learned to navigate these

places like in a way that does feel authentic to me but that authenticity that authenticity excuse me is not like super connected to the more like i don't know i'm not i guess my blackest self in many of these spaces if that makes any sense it absolutely does i mean um i think we can almost all agree that like you almost get a feeling like you have to prove that you belong there in a weird sort of way like it's almost like an assumption is made of like what is this person doing here and just from my own experience i mean not to whatever but like it took me maybe like three different multi-billion dollar franchises before i felt comfortable just walking into any game dev meetup and not feeling like i had to just constantly prepare no no i belong here i i've done work please trust me trust me trust me um you know as compared to someone who looks more like the stereotype of oh yes this person certainly is in game audio um

and i don't think once again i don't think that anyone intentionally tries to try to keep you out necessarily but it's just that since prejudices do exist it just kind of congeals into this sort of standoffishness which is very difficult to combat yeah and in terms of sort of thinking about okay well how do you go about approaching that let's say you're someone who's starting out in the industry how do you think about networking um since such as you said gosh it's like such an important part of making your way and making your career um i think my advice would be at least my journey has just been like you know find my first gdc i like stepped into this room with like all of the black people who make video games um and you know there were not that many other audio folks there um

i think one thing that i would suggest is to is to maybe have sort of a dual pronged approach find spaces where you feel as john was saying where you can be your authentic self that sort of feels like a little bit right but like it's it's a good good way of encapsulating that feeling of being able to bring all your your lived experience to to a space and then i think you you need to then fork that with with like find find your audio community too um and you know the the uh the sort of uh underrepresented groups uh are like getting bigger inside of audio but it's still such a small amount of people that it's hard to build a large enough space where it feels like something that you can move through and something that you can you know find your peeps inside that space um and so i think that would be probably my advice is that maybe you

kind of have to to kind of to fork those efforts a little bit but jasmine what's been your experience sorry i started moderating um so i guess my experience as far as networking majority of i guess the relationships i've built have been online the only the only event that i've gone to was gdc and that was before i came out here to an area of the world where there isn't a lot going on but there is a lot of opportunity to create spaces and i know for one thing with networking sometimes that's what you have to do for example if you're new into the industry game jams are perfect you can you're instantly catapulted into spaces where you're having to create something with different people well the more you do that the more you will meet people who will go off to make games and you'll have that connection that you can tie yourself into but also in lieu of that you can def you'll definitely find

people that are into games that are from a diverse background i know the last game jam that i did it was me i had um another guy on my team i think he was brazilian and then i had a woman on my team who was from um the philippines so straight out the gate i mean it wasn't planned but we ended up having a very diverse team but i think sometimes you do have to create your own space rather than trying to wait for a space to embrace you but i also say with networking a lot of the time doubt is superseded if your work speaks speaks for itself so like put your put your all into your work so that way if somebody does doubt you all you have to do is just slide them a demo and say oh you doubt me sir okay have a listen and then it gets eradicated so sometimes that's what you have to do too because that doubt will come it will rise to the surface but if you do good work or you put effort into what you do then who you who you are or what you look

like is going to get there's a it'll get thrown out the door to some degree because you know you know what you're doing so i guess that's what i would say like let your work speak for itself and then create spaces if you feel like you can't find one that you feel comfortable in i like that i like that so starting in 2020 the kind of black struggles or experiences and issues have become you know more and more prevalent at least especially in mainstream media right it started to trend on social media it became more and more obvious to people who don't pay attention to that stuff what's really been going on and now we're in 2021 and it so often happens you know things move on the news cycle changes people focus on different things so i'm curious between 2020 and 2021 how have your lies and kind of careers changed has there been kind of a groundswell of support for you and then it kind of died away is it still kind of stings like is the support still kind of staying what have you noticed in terms

of all of that those trends that social media that mainstream media and how is that support you receive change your careers if it has it all i'm listening i'm just writing notes because i forget stuff i'm sorry i mean i can i can start us off again uh so ah so [Laughter] so 2020 you know that it's it's odd it's weird it's still strange for me to talk about but it was a complete like career explosion for me right like people that i had worked with before reached out to me people that were like kind of thinking about working with me were like oh i'm going to work with you now which like one of the people i'm thinking about is like a great friend of mine so this is not like i'm not throwing shade or anything like that but um and then there were you know opportunities that were a real direct result of everything that was happening like my getting to work on the

anti-racism psas um for steven universe so there there has definitely been a uh a shift i would say like all of that that explosion of things and that groundswell like that is not around in the same way that it was which you know i have feelings about and that's a bit disappointing but i will say that on a positive note like i think being able to do things like this panel i think honestly having the opportunity to even say something to anyone like these are things that i was never going to talk about right because like who's i mean i hate to be cynical but like who's going to give you a job if you're like you know what i mean so being able to have that openness i think does feel like a huge change you know i think there are like certainly there's certainly a sense that there are people maybe kind of more established in their careers who are like much more optimistic about speaking with me than maybe they would have wouldn't

have been in the past that are like kind of this feels kind of weird to say as well but i feel like people are kind of trying to correct and like that is continuing to have an effect on my career so that is a positive thing what do you mean by trying to correct i mean like so there's this great picture i remember saying that i'm i don't know i'm going to try to describe a picture but it's a picture about equality versus equity right and it's a picture of it like oh yeah with the fence and the boxes all right i'll still describe it that way it's like two people are trying to look over a fence and they're like both kind of shorter than the fence and so equality is like they both are given like one box but like one person with one box can see over the fence and the other person is too short so with one box they still can't see whereas equity is like oh you give the person who's like shorter more boxes so that they can both see over the fence right and i feel like there is a sense that we're maybe at the very beginnings of like

starting to work towards equity in this space i guess yeah okay yeah i could give my perspective as someone who's in-house um and i've been in-house my whole career um i think i do think john that i agree with you that when for example you're looking into hiring the the idea of sort of stopping the line and saying hey do we have a diverse slate of candidates for this position is now like acceptable right like people get that and are willing to make space for that and so as you'd mentioned john right like there was this reaction right of of this like enormous groundswell of opportunity and inclusion and people actively reaching out to say like whoa like like who are who are the black folks in this space let's like let's let's figure

out who they are and lift them up right um i think that there's but that muscle has you know relaxed as you said um and that sort of groundswell of opportunity is not there but i do think that there's some amount of memory there and some amount of structural change like is it as much as as we as sort of where the pendulum was last year no but is there is there a sort of positive systemic change that comes from that i think yes um but it's you know in the end it's smaller than we would like um i speak with the royal we think but but it's it is it is like it's a change um and i think folks are folks are just generally more receptive to to unders to sort of understand uh other groups groups perspectives and and to sort of empathize with the experience of those

groups going through the processes that they've built inside of a company and and sort of are looking to change those yeah i've definitely seen um some very positive outreach as well uh amongst recruiters and people who are looking to either hire black talent or to at least just uplift them and you know have twitter threads and say here are our black creators check them out um and even if that has certainly slowed down um in 2021 which by the way i don't think it necessarily has in the terms of the recruiters i've definitely seen uh impressively some recruiters from certain publishers doing a great job of making sure to find black spaces like the black and gaming facebook groups and other spaces to find creators i definitely would say that it's also partially on us to continue and take you know whatever momentum was generated in

2020 to see if we can take the baton and go from there um and and from from my experience i've definitely found so many wonderfully talented people in the past year and a half or so partially because of groups like black and game audio like discord group that john started and and also composing diversity collective and and just kind of seeing people out there in the wild of of twitter and facebook and maybe they're on some mega thread maybe i just happen to see them uh but i take note of them and i i just realized okay well hey here's a group of people maybe it's on me as well to hire black talent yeah to hire other forms of underpublished talent underrepresented talent and see whatever little power that i have which isn't great but it's it's enough um to uplift them and help and i think that um i'm not alone in that regard um so my my outlook is actually still rather positive even if it's on the

surface does seem like the uh the 2020 momentum has slowed yeah i would agree will like there's i i felt as part of as part of the last year a sort of weight of responsibility um that i hadn't really felt before like i'm in the games in the game scheme of things i'm like getting old now um and so i'm like and so i felt like okay yeah there's a huge opportunity but there's a huge amount of work to do right to build organizations in order to to structuralize um making the change that we want to see um and so yeah there's been a uh a sort of ground swell at least in sort of my realm of things the ground swell of organizational work i started a thing called the game audio diversity alliance like to give scholarships out to

kids and then will you've been involved in one that's run run out of gang right um and uh so i think like that's sort of another space of opportunity that i saw open up was like oh yeah let's build these organizations that can that can be black or and like or diversely owned and operated um in order to in order to make structural change and i agree with what you said will especially about the onus being on us also i i think i'll talk about 2020 after this but i will say 2021 i i think it has made for those of us who do want to try and push the envelope in terms to incorporating black talent into our work it has made it easier for us to do that depending on who we're working with i know one of the projects that i'm on i have a really really huge goal that i want to meet with this project and i honestly did well just what i

wanted i want at least 90 of the musicians that i hired to be black or people of color and i had planned to do this and never told the developer and we actually um i don't know if that's a good thing but i'm just like you know what i'm just gonna do it and then oh just do it but i was i was gonna do it i was like i mean whatever i'm doing i'm composing whatever but we had a face-to-face we had a meeting one-on-one meeting he was doing this with everybody and he literally asked the question is there anything that you have like aspirations for in this project that you that you know that you would like to discuss and i told him and he was like yo i am 100 for this and i was like i mean it doesn't matter if you weren't but i'm glad that you're awesome like i'm glad that you are but it's i guess it's just the fact that with this particular with this company i felt comfortable enough to say i want to do this and a good part of me felt like they would be for it and he was so it's just

knowing that we're in a space now where we could do that we're just like you know what i want this type of i want these people being a huge conglomerate of what i'm working with and you know the people that i'm working for are like you know what i i totally i totally get it you know doesn't i'm here for it so that's nice but in 2020 i think i'm i was definitely one of the ones who was extremely skeptical um of people who were reaching out i didn't nothing really changed for me what i did notice was a lot of focus being put on to you know like hey i have this job if you're black please you know apply and i'm one of those people where when i see that i get irritated like you can just say a diverse applicants can apply or you know or just just say i have a job and go for it but you know i understand that other people might like seeing that wording put on a job application but i know for me i just as soon as i

see that i'm just like i don't i just i just i don't want to do it and that's probably because a bit of it felt performative for me i know um i know there are some people other there were some composers like offering services like hey if like if you're black or you're marginalized like i want to give you you know help i want to help you out and that frustrated me too because my thought process is we've been going through this for years and now you want to offer your services now when you know you can kind of it can add to the clout that you can get on social media it's one of those things where we know it's been happening for forever so why are you offering your hand now when it feels as though socially it's accepted and exalted if you do that but i am i am happy that it has led to opportunities and things that have been exposing themselves now in 2021 so i'm happy i'm happy about it now that's all i got awesome yeah you brought up a really

good point jasmine about that kind of performative activism that can happen during situations like this it it tends to be a thing where i i imagine and you tell me what you feel does it sometimes feel that you can tell when it's performative and when it's not can you kind of see through it is it the sort of thing where you know like okay come on and how do you kind of deal with that sort of coming up i think for me at least with me at least in that i think in that realm it's like you lose either way because you have people like me who are just like oh i can't stand them when they do that when you have other people just like i love it with it so it's you really just kind of you have to do what your heart feels like is the correct thing because whoever feels inspired to apply or join into it they'll do it and that's just from a surface level perspective of it once you're actually in the throes of like when you're actually in the environment with those people then you start to understand uh

y'all are just all show so i think as far as a job application you can't really tell but when you start talking to people you start voicing ideas and you start hearing how you know they act whenever you might make a comment about something that they said or something that they might have alluded to and then you start to see if they're open to being corrected or if they start breaking down and getting defensive in certain ways then you start to see okay i don't think this environment is what they made it out to be if they intended on it being an environment that's inclusive right i think it's a difference between a group or organization saying hey we want to come to you on your terms rather than hey will you come to us on our terms right and yeah it's it differs from place to place but i think like in the core that's that is maybe the difference between like performative outreach and and uh

and actual outreach yeah i i would definitely agree with that um yeah and i so i kind of feel i feel two ways about it right like on one hand it's even honestly i've kind of noticed this performative thing probably less in my professional life like a little bit in my professional life but i have really noticed it in my personal life a little bit too actually where people are like hey if you need anything just let me know and it's like oh great and you know there are a couple of people where i had like you know one or two good conversations but then they were kind of back to like business as usual back to their lives back to you know whatever they were doing and that along with some of the professional opportunities that have kind of like you know been that way can honestly be deeply upsetting so that is part of it like i'm feeling a little upset talking about it but then on the other hand uh if you'll excuse my phrasing like it checks a check like i have

right like i mean i hate to i hate to be that person but it's like i you know i've been wanting to do this since i was a child and i made the decision that i was going to do it whatever it takes so like sometimes so you walk into a room and like i try to be optimistic like i go in and i'm positive i'm like yeah we're going to do this it's going to be great it's going to be wonderful you know like whatever doubt i might have i just ignore it i put it to the side and i'm like let's do this and then you know maybe like five weeks later i'm like okay i see i see how this is gonna be but i'm also like but i got paid and i'm making some music or i'm trying to make some music or i'm trying to make game which was the point in the first place so you'd have a few deep sighs and then get on with it i guess oh there's one of them

i need to be more like that i gotta work on it i'm i'm just like if i'm just like i ain't got time life's too short yeah yeah so we were talking earlier about kind of that feeling like you belong in a space john i think you're the one who brought it up you went to that barber shop and you're like oh i i feel good here i feel like i belong do you feel in the kind of broader industry as a whole when you walk into a room that just can you know anyone's welcome it's probably predominantly white if you're in the western kind of world especially do you feel that you have to kind of filter yourselves or kind of act a certain way to fit in do you do you feel that that comes up you know i used to go to a lot of meetups especially here in seattle um which again you know i'm not trying to say anything negative i mean i think that seattle has probably the greatest game audio community in the world um however before every meetup i went to it was a

very lengthy and surprisingly agonizing process of just going in front of the mirror trying this outfit that outfit this one constantly trying to figure out like okay i'm a little you know a little more physical than most people how do i sort of minimize the the scariness of my appearance how do i soften my appearance to look more acceptable in this in this group of uh you know professional nerds and stuff you know i'm trying to be a softer nerd i think that's cute but it's it's it's true and i i mean i spent a truly agonizing amount of time worrying about this and then when i get there you have to sort of like okay keep your voice down and then and speak with this sort of whatever um especially early on um i mean as as time went on and and i befriended more people in the game audio community so it wasn't like here's a

room full of people i don't know but instead it's like here's a room full of people 90 of them i know and have befriended and they know already what my credits and whatnot are then it's like okay now you can relax but honestly i i don't want anyone else to have to go through all of that and that's kind of where where my head space has been the last several years i've been incredibly lucky and i admit to that freely um it's it's unusual um for someone in our situation to have had the the level of success that i'm very happy to have and very grateful to have enjoyed but i don't want anyone else to have to go through just rewriting yourself just to be accepted just so that someone can listen to you and not just assume oh he's some fly-by-night operation that's going to try to put hip-hop in our games and you know things things like that these assumptions that unfortunately are a reality for us

but what if we wanted to put hip-hop in our games too right why not exactly and that's that's another part of it is the diversity of the content itself i mean i happen to be um you know more into like the world music orchestral world and stuff which is um you know it's an acceptable genre for pretty much any genre of games but why don't we have more spider-man miles morales you know why don't we have more titles that blend different genres that typically aren't aren't heard anymore and i think now is the perfect time to do it with that i haven't been in like i said before i haven't been in any i haven't been in many spaces and so i haven't really felt the need to filter filter myself primarily because of that um and then i don't know when i went to gdc i felt more like an observer anyway

so i don't know if that changes how i might see myself but um i'm trying to think i mean i don't i don't think i filtered myself really or yeah i don't think i've needed to i don't think i've been in positions like will to need to filter myself since majority of my career spawned online so i could literally be myself anyway since i was technically anonymous and um so that i guess that worked out for for me so yeah yeah i mean i'm a bi-racial kid so like i've been code switching literally my entire life and so you know it's it's it's something you just sort of i've i've been thinking a lot about like i just don't realize that i do it you know um and

especially sort of my journey through games i started at harmonix which is a place that at the time and still is was just like rock culture right like it is just like um and so i you know put that part of myself away when i was at work um and you know the part that i grew up on like you know listening to hip-hop and like and being part of the sort of part of myself that is steeped in black culture of like the 90s and early 2000s and um and [Music] so you do it without thinking like you you lean more into the into the part of yourself that loves games right and you lean you lean more into the the culture that you know is shared in those spaces right um and that that makes you know people feel more safe and you

therefore more acceptable and um but unwittingly you're like you're you're hiding away a part of yourself that you without thinking don't think is safe to show right and so that's sort of the that's the beauty of like inclusive spaces right you can is it like you can dust off and and excavate that part of yourself that you didn't realize you weren't using for the past you know 15 years or whatever um and rediscover it yep yeah stand ups at brass lion are like are wildly different like i'm bringing out all the old references and it's it's great um but yeah i didn't realize i wasn't doing it for for the you know the rest of my john career you have something to add yep is what i added exactly that honestly all of that i

couldn't have said it better myself awesome yeah and will you just brought up the interesting thought of genres in when it comes to music especially have you ever run into the issue for any of you where someone expects you to do a certain genre based on your race they'll just assume that maybe you do traditionally black music and just be surprised when you don't oh yeah absolutely absolutely i mean you know it's it's understandable especially um if you just don't have any experience at all with people um people of color then it's like okay sure you have your stereotypes i mean i've definitely gone to i don't mean to i i feel like i'm bad cop why do i always have to deliver like a is this a setup all along what is this but yeah you know i've i've been to gdc you know you have the nice little conversation circles west third floor

and you know people getting to know each other and someone's asking oh what musical genres do you all write in and everyone kind of goes in the circle explaining gets to me and the person just says oh so i guess you do hip hop right and at the time i was working at lucasarts so i had this lucasarts badge that literally said that's right there and i'd already introduced myself as you know that as such so i said no you know i mostly do orchestral you know star wars you know i've done some star wars and then they just went okay so like jazz and to which i just black orchestra is jazz like orchestra jazz that's what you mean it is absolutely what it is but just like jasmine mentioned earlier your work has to speak for itself and i think more than you know every

every black parent tells their kids look you have to work twice as hard you have to shine like crazy you have to work super hard at your work because um in order to be taken seriously it has to just be that much you know it has to achieve that much um and so yeah it's it's funny when they make these assumptions about me just because of you know whatever but uh after a while um if you keep at it and keep sort of improving yourself have that humility to be extremely self-critical about your work then these kind of issues go away and it just becomes hilarious when they make that assumption about you i was curious well like what what was your experience when you were approaching the score for mk which is uh like sort of leaning as sort of mainstream video games go has sort of some amount of venn diagram

overlap with black culture um yeah like what was that experience like you've just warned my heart because i didn't think anyone would notice that i genuinely but actually i i'll i'll explain it it was actually quite intentional there's a whole faction in the game of um i mean they're earth realmers but they're pretty much all american like sonia jackie jacks cassie johnny cage and i immediately i saw this faction and i said to myself i want to write a theme for this faction that embraces black culture that embraces spirituals and it has that kind of pentatonic melody that you would expect from from spirituals and uh you know i hired an amazing soul singer for this one scene with um johnny cassie and jackie and uh you know she knocked it out of park obviously she's amazing and it was very important to me that i had kind of two sides to it one was to show

yes this is the american sound you can't divorce black music from american music it's impossible so i wanted to show this is the american sound to kind of portray the characters um but also another kind of um nuance to it uh which is another reason why i'm so glad that you brought this up was that um there was a military heroism in it as well and just like that you cannot dissociate the black experience from the military in american military history as well and um i had that sort of military pride in there in certain moments with jax and jackie showing that they're a military family they have a lot of pride and they're also black characters and yeah i mean i felt just so blessed to be on that project the audio directors were extremely open to all of my ideas and uh it was it was a great opportunity to sort of i don't think we've ever really had spirituals in a video or soul singing or anything like that i

mean i could be wrong you know excuse me if i am but um it was a fantastic opportunity to bring that to the forefront yes i love that caleb thank you for asking that that's awesome thank you so actually uh i might as well i might as well ask my uh question for you you caleb we'll put you in the spotlight for a second uh so you are an audio director of color there there aren't very many of those in the western kind of game industry at all i can maybe count on one hand off the top of my head the amount that there are so i'm curious what kind of discussions or thought processes thought processes you that you can have now that you are an audio director of color that you couldn't maybe at previous companies or kind of previous spaces that you've been in big question um well i think that uh i think this sort of most obvious one

is around hiring right and team building um you know both as an audio director sort of you're that you're now in the position to be the shot caller for like what composer do you put on a project what voice-over talent are you hiring how are you building your team and how are you building the processes at a studio in order to you know in this case ensure that we're we're we're we have like diverse hiring practices and requirements around diverse slates and things like that um so that is like an amazing privilege and an amazing responsibility um also um it is a seat at the table right it's a seat at the table creatively around building what a video game it is um like it's it's i'll sort of sing the praises of being in the being an audio director for a second because it's amazing but i don't

come up through like the sort of traditional like studio background um which a lot of a lot of sound designers do nor do i come through the like music conservatory background i i'm like a an interactive artist basically i used to do like sound installations um and uh so the thing that drives me to work on games is that i love games i happen to be really good maybe probably not at doing sound stuff um but i love games so i consider myself like a game developer who works in audio rather than an audio person who who works in games and so being able to be sort of present at the creation of the ideas and the core ideas of what a game is is like an amazing position to be in um and it's it's a vector by which

i can help steer games to be to be something that that i want them to be to to sort of make make the things that i want to see in the world um but as i said it's a huge responsibility because it's also an opportunity to to you know take a crowbar and pry out space for folks right um and there is so much work to do especially in audio um in audio it's it's really a case where we we have sort of twin vectors in order to really change the face of of our discipline we have an enormous gender inequality problem in audio um and we just generally have a diversity problem in audio um you know it's it's why i shaved my beard off we need like no offense to all the bearded dudes but like um we need a little less um but

so it's it's difficult every hiring decision is at is to be honest is kind of agony um because every every spot in game audio has a lot of meaning um and maybe i'm putting like a little too much weight on it but you know there aren't that many sound designer positions at each studio so every it's like especially for in-house positions right and so it's a really really difficult decision um to to decide who to put on your team because every person on your team changes the voice of your game a little bit um but yeah it's a blessing and a curse blessing and responsibility um but yeah i wouldn't trade it for anything um like i love being at the table to to figure out what games are it's awesome i love that and for the for the rest of you and also caleb too for from your

previous experience considering most of the time if you are on a project that has an audio director odds are they're a white person like the odds are very high that that's the case have there ever been any sort of situations where you've had to kind of push for more diverse thought or any like diverse music or anything like that or has it generally just been accepted whenever you do have any of those ideals that you want to put forward in your music or sound i think for me personally i feel like i'm kind of neutralizing this i haven't been in a position where i've needed to the the current project that i mentioned earlier would probably be the very first time that i've ever done anything that could bring about opposition and i got it it didn't and even then like i said if i hadn't said anything the opposition wouldn't have come would

have come when it was too late so by then i wouldn't have even cared um but fortunately for this um i brought it to the forefront and it wasn't an issue so nice anyone else i know i'm making a bunch of faces over here um i don't know like i it's for me in general i think not even necessarily as a black person but just as an artist it can be very difficult to find out how much creative freedom you have and to like kind of bounce things back and forth so like i will say that like i don't know i as i go further in my career and as i work in kind of different environments i do get a little bit more comfortable with like doing some stuff that's a little bit more out there so i don't know i i don't even know if i should have

started talking i don't know i would say in general it you know there's probably kind of a dual thing right it's like you're a composer and you're also black and it's like maybe both of those feet are like pressing down on some of my creative expression so like in general just the more open people can be i think the better off i mean they get better you get better music in your game if you like just let people do stuff you know and people are afraid i think yeah it's just not an experience i have but as an audio director i imagine that like we're vaguely terrifying look it's like you wanna you wanna like please decline like we're the client right you want to like please the client um and so [Music] yeah i i agree john like giving that space my sort of general ethos as an audio director is like

have an opinion of like have a have a version of the thing in your head don't share that uh because if you do it it will often destroy the ability for the person you're working with to exceed that expectation oh yeah yeah so i do that with composers and i do that with voice with with voice talent as well you can always fall back on the thing in your head if you're not if like you're like no i like we're not finding it like i need to just get the thing um but the like if you leave that space for the people you're working with to bring themselves and to surprise you then that's just better because it's better than your wildest dreams um but if you just you know if you let that out of the out of your bag too early like you know people are just gonna do that because you know they wanna they wanna please you yeah i mean uh i think this is not

necessary well for in my experience this hasn't necessarily been a black and game audio situation but more of a composer in game audio situation that everyone kind of goes through and i have to say that having worked on basically every tier you know of of game development from like very high budget very small budget there is no correlation whatsoever between budget or status or whatever of the game and how much creative freedom that you have um at least not that i've experienced um you know once again with mortal kombat it almost seems like it was a goal for me to like how can i just surprise them how can i come up with something that's that's going to you know surprise them and be maybe very left field but still make it in still work for the game and they were completely on board with every single weird decision that i that i came up with big action scene and it's just a pipe organ you know things like that um but it worked and they were totally happy with it one of the

interesting opportunities i think that we have um not only with the coming generation next gen which is now or whatever you want to call it but also just with our history uh in game music is that there really are a lot of musical genres that have not been explored and a lot of them are black american musical genres you haven't heard much gospel in games you haven't heard much spirituals you haven't heard that much of different kinds of jazz and and of course hip-hop is only just now you know starting to get on the rise with the indie world and and miles morales like i mentioned earlier so i see it as a great opportunity honestly and i'm hoping that directors can uh be open to this and kind of think less in terms of like well here is how i envisioned the score going and more in terms of well how does this work on an emotional level how does this work on a mechanical level as well that said by the time that they've

chosen the composer they usually chose that composer for a reason uh that reason usually being either their demo their previous work or whatever so there is only so much wiggle room that they can tolerate but it is definitely something to keep in mind nice nice so uh question for you jasmine specifically i'm curious considering you've been vietnam in vietnam for a little bit now and you have kind of a unique view on being overseas right when it comes to being in the game audio field and you've built your career primarily online as well so i'm curious from your point of view have you ever had to kind of hide or accentuate your blackness in any way have you felt you've had to in any way when you are kind of making this career happen online or have you just kind of gone with whatever he feels right and it's worked out fine i i generally have just gone with however i felt

i know i guess when you say accept my blackness you mean act more black because i've seen in a lot of spaces people tend to kind of expect that okay now that's interesting i i'll definitely say not from a game audio perspective though but just being in like an expat space has been interesting but as far as being online no i've been able to continue just being my normal self online i haven't had to overcompensate in any way so yeah i've i've been fairly i don't know i feel like i mean granted you get most of i believe most of the opportunities that you get as a composer come from in-person interactions but i will say even though it's definitely a lot harder to grow a career online when you don't show your face or you go a long time without having to show your face a lot of the things that i've heard that john will and caleb

having to do you don't have to do that's probably but honestly it's because everybody automatically thinks you're a white male so so you know i don't have to hide because i people already assume i'm status quo you know so i guess that's i guess that's the upside to it i'm i know i had one tangential but i remember i when i was first starting and a guy knew a guy knew that i was a woman and so he was like hey you know what you should do you should like create this sexy girl persona that'll help you sell your music and i was like ugh but i mean the fact that somebody like that's and i've only had that happen once right but i just threw up in my mouth like why what do you think that works well yeah but yeah i haven't had to deal with any need to be extra black online that's funny saying that but

good good so kind of a few questions kind of as we kind of circle to to the end i'm curious because you know we're doing this panel we're getting some of your experiences thoughts your your kind of ideals out there but once this panel's over people will kind of go back to their regular lives they'll go back to experiencing the rest of gdc they'll think about their careers etc etc if you were to say what things people should do or what they should take away and what we should act on to make the space more diverse more inclusive more empathetic to your experiences and everyone else's what would those things be i feel like even if if a person you know if you feel like you want to be helpful right if you were to take even like 30 minutes out of your day to sit and think about what you could do it doesn't even matter if you come up

with a good idea a bad idea no idea it really doesn't matter you could i mean you could say the most awful thing after having done this 30 minutes but i feel like if you do this 30 minutes i think that'll change like who you are when you approach someone and even if you say something off color or whatever i think they'll feel your effort and that will be meaningful right like that doesn't mean that they're going to embrace you and be like oh you're so wonderful like don't go in with that expectation necessarily but just like put in the smallest amount of time and i think it'll have a dramatic impact on your interactions with people going forward like honestly i have a question is this is this question geared towards people trying to make their spaces more inclusive yes okay uh i i think mine might be similar to what what john said i guess a couple

uh honestly this is based off what caleb said like going two spaces versus expecting people to come to you because when you do do your research to try and put yourself into a position but one thing i was talking to somebody about this where a lot of people generally their spaces are or the people that they interact with are people that are very similar to them and it's like i feel like a lot of the time the government or environments try to force diversity on people but usually people tend to i feel like most people tend to gravitate towards towards spaces that they're comfortable with which is generally uh comprised of people that look like them and so one one thing that i thought about was if people weren't put in positions to have to interact with people that are different from them when they feel led to do that like ah i actually do hang out with a lot of people who don't look like me well this place is open am i interested in going to see with how other people who

you know being willing to open up my mindset to what other people may live with their life or what their culture may be like and so i guess i would definitely say put yourself in a position to be uncomfortable be okay with being uncomfortable just so that you can expose yourself to what other people generally feel you know i think just practice trying to walk in someone else's shoes you know it would definitely be a start yeah and um i guess also be open to like self-reflection i think that's difficult too like being here in vietnam um i realized that i have an immense amount of privilege and i feel like for some people depending on where they're coming from they might they might come to another country and not realize that oh you have a lot of power that you didn't feel like you might have had back home but you haven't now and are you aware of that and also being able to look at some of the actions that you might do and go oh

wow that's actually i'm actually not being um conscientious of how my actions affect the people that live here or affect the people who primarily take up this environment and being okay with someone saying hey you do realize that what you're doing needs this and rather than getting defensive being able to internalize that and go actually they have a point and this time i can do this the next time the situation arises so i guess being open to being able to put yourself in uncomfortable situations and also being able to reflect on an event or an action that someone might bring to you like it's not it has nothing to do with your character it could just this is just a way for you to for your character to grow i guess in that sense yeah yeah i would recommend that folks one like in your hiring change your hiring practices like like move to

like there are companies i've worked at that have requirements around diverse having a diverse slate of candidates before they're hot they will hire for a position that's like a pretty from a lot of people's perspective that's a pretty large step to take but i think it's an interesting way and a really effective way to drive to drive sort of more diverse teams this is putting a little bit this is always like a little bit of catch-22 because it's putting work on people but like go into go into spaces where you're not the the majority and listen right like come down into the into the black and game audio discord right and listen and ask questions right it's okay like to ask questions um and also this is putting work on people part like keep tapping

keep tapping people's networks when you're feeling like ah like i want a diverse slate of people but like i don't have those people in my network keep reaching out and being like hey do you know folks like just like keep doing that it is putting work on other people and that's always like a little bit of a trap but um you know the outcome is positive and i think it's it's a great sort of muscle memory to build to like reach outside your networks and try to tap into those adjacent networks um in order to find to sort of broaden searches broaden the amount of connections that you can make um that would be my advice yeah i know this is a horrible thing to bring up with only one minute left but i'll try to go fast so the two things i wanted to bring up number one there is a group called the composer's diversity collective you can literally go i think composersdiversitycollective.com.org and it's an easily searchable database

list of all of this talent of all different races countries of origins language first languages and whatnot it's basically hollywood's way of saying there's no excuse anymore you can find us here we're all over the world and the other thing i wanted to mention is that we really should rethink how we're looking at entry-level jobs in this industry we really should rethink that because does it really make sense for an entry-level job to require years of aaa experience does it make sense to require any kind of a demo at all because think about it if they have a demo and it's outstanding chances are it's someone who was able to afford all the greatest sample libraries gear whatnot maybe they already have some form of an advanced education in the field and you're kind of already kind of re-accentuating whatever inequalities are already there so perhaps maybe look

more into soft skills um how teachable does this person seem how personable are they yeah i couldn't agree more i think the uh the to point at the work that's being done at polyarc um there are several articles about how they've been uh uh christians and stefan have been um adjusting their hiring processes to make them more inclusive and to try to lower those technical and sort of monetary barriers to entry um it's really really inspiring something i've taken a lot of inspiration from um so yeah you'll get better employees that way you'll teach them your studio's methods and you've already guaranteed that they're going to be teachable people likeable people yeah rather than just like well we're hiring for entry level and we can save a couple of bucks if we hire someone who's actually mid-level you know you have to kind of stop that process john did you have anything that i do i

really do i know we're over but i was gonna say like the entry level thing i think is so huge because like you know i you know i went to the school that i could barely afford that's a whole nother story but i went to the school that i could barely afford and i came out of school and like i could have made music for games but like there are so many people and you know i'm sure there are so many entry-level positions that would not have given me a shot and it's like i was capable but it wasn't going to happen and honestly by the time like i am honestly questioning whether or not i could get an entry level position right now like sitting 100 this panel i'm like could i like i i know that's preposterous but i don't feel that it's preposterous you know what i mean so like it's ridiculous just come on guys like goodbye oh okay that's it awesome well john will caleb and jasmine thank you all so much for doing this

panel it is super appreciated and i think it'll be a huge help to everyone out there and thank you to gdc thank you thank you thank you so much [Music]